


Composure

by sareli



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sareli/pseuds/sareli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He asks you if you miss him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Composure

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Composure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135331) by [nikolaschika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikolaschika/pseuds/nikolaschika)



He asks you if you miss him. The other him. The one you left behind in your timeline.

“As regrettable as I find it to admit,” You begin carefully, pushing aside the thoughts that lifted their heads from the dust you have stubbornly laid over them. “At the time of my departure from my original timeline, it had been decades since your counterpart had passed.”

This doesn’t throw him off, but you didn’t expect it to, did you?

“That’s not what I asked,” he says softly, determination coloring his eyes alongside the blue that you find so unnerving.

One might wonder why you even tried to avoid the question as you did. Of course you knew your answer was not truly an answer. It would not satisfy him, not in any alternate reality. That much you know for certain.

But you are uncertain of your ability to remain composed where Jim is concerned.

There was a time when you had no control at all, you had no choice but to let the pain of losing him course through you, searing in your veins and mangling something deep within you, damaging you beyond repair. Whatever part of you was destroyed by the loss doesn’t hurt anymore, but occasionally you can feel its twisted remains, and the very act of breathing is a chore.

Those days are quite few and far between, now. You haven’t felt one like it in years. But you remember them. You will never forget them, just as you will never forget him.

Most of the time, that space lies empty. Neither despair nor joy, pain nor comfort, resides within it. It does not hurt, but it is not kind. Blank and desolate, it vaguely reminds you of Delta Vega, however little time you may have spent there. It even radiates a kind of cold that leaves you… wanting.

For what? You know exactly. You wish for it daily.

You are about to let all of this fall from your lips, leaving everything out in the open; everything you wanted to tell Jim after you lost him, but couldn't, so you drove thoughts of him from your mind, kept emotions bottled inside you as the people you knew grew fewer...

But he is not Jim. This blue-eyed boy in front of you is not your Jim. In fact, you have made it a point to refer to him as James always, because Jim is someone he can never and will never be, not for you. You must remember that, or your emotions will get the better of you.

Though it seems, you realize as you come back to yourself, your gaze locked with the concerned, overwhelmingly blue one of James Kirk, you already have.

The simple truth terrifies young James. He is not your Jim- he is not!- but it’s just as easy to tell that what you say next scares him halfway to his grave.

"Yes," you say finally, quietly, painstakingly regaining your composure. "Every day that I breathe."

**Author's Note:**

> whee spock prime angst wheeeeeeeeeeeee


End file.
